1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a calling apparatus, system, and method for contacting potential customers or other contacts. More particularly, the present invention relates to a calling apparatus, system, and method for efficiently presenting scripted dialog that is personal to the contact.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the sales business, telephone marketing is essential. Simply put, the more potential customers you contact, the more potential sales you will have. Telephone marketing companies employ sales representatives to call potential customers and provide a sales pitch. These companies often employ hundreds of sales representatives or agents to work out of large calling centers. Most calling centers are equipped with phone technology that allows the sales representative to make or initiate a large volume of phone calls to contacts in a short period of time. Although market research may determine the best information to present to a particular type of customer contact, different agents present the material in different ways, and the way in which the agent communicates with a potential customer or contact is often the difference between a sale and a rejection. To that end, professional voice actors may be employed to deliver scripted information and content to contacts and potential customers. Voice actors record scripts to be played by multiple sales agents. These scripts may be utilized as part of a calling system for contacting the potential customer.
The problem with many existing calling systems however, is that they are inflexible in responding to a customer. Playing prerecorded scripts to respond to a live, presently asked, question is inadequate. Prerecorded scripts do not understand context or provide information to allow the agent to respond without having a contact know they are talking with a computer. Few, if any, existing calling systems allow an agent to seamlessly interject into the dialog to respond to a concern by the contact. Instead, the predetermined scripted sales dialog continues without addressing the contact's real-time questions or responses. Most people, even if interested in the product being offered, are turned off by the fact that they are not talking to a live person. Customers can become frustrated when a calling system plays a script that does not precisely match or correspond to a response or question by the contact. When a potential customer determines that they are having a dialog with a computer, they often hang up and the potential sale is lost.
Presently known calling systems that play prerecorded scripts, either do not allow for interjection by a human voice, or do not allow the transparent switch from computer to human voice without a difference in sound or quality that is obvious to the contact. Further, existing calling systems do not allow the seamless transition in content between a live voice and a prerecorded script. Additionally, the flow of dialog in existing calling systems is slow and stilted with an unnatural or mechanical pace or feel to it.
Further, most existing calling systems do not keep track of data presented by the system and received by the contact for future statistical, accounting or other uses. Nor can these systems provide personalized scripts to the contact.
Thus, it would be an advancement in the art to provide a calling apparatus, system, and method for contacting a customer that is flexible and natural in the way content is presented to a customer. It would be an additional advancement in the art to provide such an apparatus, system, and method that could be used with outgoing calls. It would be another advancement if a variety of prerecorded content could be provided and easily negotiated by a sales agent. It would be an additional advancement in the art to provide an apparatus, system, and method that could keep track of important calling and contact data. It would be yet an additional advancement in the art to provide such an apparatus, system, and method for seamlessly and transparently integrating an agent's live voice with a prerecorded voice by someone other than the agent. It would be another advancement to provide such an apparatus, system, and method that was easy to utilize and navigate between scripts to form a dialog that was not disjointed.
Such an apparatus, system, and method in accordance with the present invention are disclosed and claimed herein.